Monk: Sousa Didn't Train Us Hard Enough

Garry Monk has criticised Paulo Sousa's training methods, saying he didn't get the team working hard enough.

The Swansea City captain says there were no real reasons behind his methods but that has all changed under new boss Brendan Rodgers.

Monk told BBC Sport:

'It can be a little difficult to take as a player mentally,'

'The methods in training, there was no real reasoning behind any of his methods and why we were doing things. There was no great organisation towards it.

'Knowledge-wise he knew his stuff. But it was hard to take when you've gone from one extreme [under Sousa's predecessor Roberto Martinez] to the other extreme but it like we're back on track now.

'Training has stepped up and especially the way we play football, our football fitness is massive to us and I think you could see a lot of times last season we would dominate teams, get to the second half and we would be a bit tired and that mainly comes down from training.'

'It was frustrating in terms of training going from working intensely hard every single day to practically not even getting a sweat on,'

'Every manager is different, everyone's philosophy is different. Paulo was a lot more laid back than other managers and you take each one as they come.

'As a group of players that I know and have trained with, every single day I know that's not what was best for us.

'Everyone agreed that we need to be pushed and pushed. In training we need to be going over the edge sometimes to get your fitness where you need it in the last five minutes, where we are being pushed to the limit in the game.

'That's kind of where we let ourselves down but it was difficult as well because we weren't allowed to do extra training.

'Every manager is different and you learn from every manager and defensively we learnt a lot from Paulo.

'We thank him for that, wish him all the best at Leicester but I think it was right for him to move on and now we've got a manager in who's going to work us.'

Alan Tate also complimented the training under Rodgers, saying there is more fitness work, which is what the players need. You can read what he said here